Downstream news update: Asia and the Middle East

Asia

The Rs 20 000 crore BPCL Kochi refinery expansion project site at Ambalamugal has been declared a ‘strike free zone’ with a view to completing the project within the scheduled 42 months.

A decision to this effect was taken at a conciliatory meeting of stakeholders of the project, including prominent trade unions, company management, contractors association and state government.

South Korea

Saudi Butanol Company (Sabuco), a joint venture of local petrochemicals firms, has awarded South Korea’s Daelim Construction Co. a US$ 293 million contract to build a butanol plant.

Construction of the plant will start in January 2014 in Jubail Industrial City. Completion is scheduled for May 2015. The plant will have a capacity of 330 000 tpy of n-butanol, a type of alcohol used to make other chemicals and 11 000 tpy of iso-butanol.

Middle East

Iran

Iran’s Fajr-e-Jam refinery’s annual repair project has caused the facility to stop producing gas. It is predicted that the country’s gas production will experience a 100 – 150 million m3 reduction for three days.

Also in Iran, six new NGL units are to be constructed in the Mahshahr Special Economic Zone in order to meet petrochemical palnts’ demand for feedstock, following the conclusion of a contract between Imam Khomeini Petrochemical Plant and Arvandan Oil and Gas Company.

National Petroleum Company representative, Ali Mohammad Bossaghzadeh, has outlined that negotiations are currently underway between the Petroleum Ministry and the National Iranian South Oil Company (NIOC); an agreement is expected to have been reached by the end of the summer.

Meanwhile, on a national scale, Iran’s gasoline production capacity looks set to reach 71 million ltr/d in the near future, according to Head of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), Alireza Zeighami.

Zeighami has outlined how gasoline production at domestic oil refineries is increasing rapidly. Current production by petrochemical plants stands at 65 million ltr/d; Zeighami holds that 71 million ltr/d capacity will be reached following the completion of new development plans at Tabriz, Isfahan and Bandar Abbas.

Libya

An agreement has been reached with security guards who had shut down two oil ports in eastern Libya, allowing exports to resume.

Members of the security forces guarding the Es Sider and Ras Lanuf ports had shut them down in the last few says after they demanded better working conditions.